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fuckwits and cowards

We are a nation ruled by fuckwits and cowards. There are people in this nation who truly believe a continuing cascade of mass shootings is a reasonable price to pay for the freedom to…to what? To own a lot of guns? And there are politicians who know there are practical ways to reduce that body count, but are too afraid of losing their job to actually do anything about it. Fuckwits and cowards.

We can talk about honoring the first responders, but it’s all bullshit if we’re not going to even attempt to reduce the horrors they’re responding to. We can talk about honoring the dead, but fuck them — they’re dead and they can’t vote, and even if the families of the dead make a fuss they can’t outspend the National Rifle Association. We can talk about honoring the Constitution, but it’s just a head fake — we routinely shit on chunks of the other amendments. We can talk, but don’t for a minute believe talk will result in anything. It won’t. Not as long as we’re a nation ruled by fuckwits and cowards.

Here’s a sad thing: I can no longer sustain any outrage about the butcher’s bill. 20 second-graders dead, 32 college students dead, 50 gay folks dead, maybe more than 60 country music fans dead. They’re becoming meaningless numbers. Meaningless deaths. Because we all know we’re not going to do anything about it beyond muttering something about thoughts and prayers. They’re good at that, the fuckwits and cowards; they have a never-ending font of thoughts and prayers.

It’s not just the mass shootings, of course. Every day about a hundred people die by the gun. They’re not all murders; some of them are suicides, some of them are accidental, some of them are a result of negligence. The fuckwits believe those deaths are inevitable, which means the world is a dangerous place, which means they’re afraid all the time, and because they’re fuckwits they believe the only way to protect themselves from people with guns is to have guns themselves. The cowards know better, but they encourage that circular thinking because it helps them stay in power.

Fuckwits and cowards. And the rest of us? The rest of us are worn out. You can’t win an argument with a fuckwit because they’re fuckwitted. You can’t win an argument with a coward because cowards lie. Making arguments you know you can’t win is just fucking exhausting. And discouraging. And disheartening.

But damn it, we still have to do it. Call your members of Congress today. It won’t matter, but do it anyway. Why? Because there are a bunch of dead country music fans to go along with our dead gay folks and our dead college students and our dead second-graders and all the dead spouses and girlfriends and co-workers and children and neighbors and siblings and no matter how fucking tired we are, we can’t just stay quiet.

11 thoughts on “fuckwits and cowards”

That’s a fuckwitted argument. Do DWI laws keep people from driving while intoxicated? Do speeding laws keep people from speeding? Do fraud laws keep people from committing fraud?

No, but they reduce the incidence of fraud, of speeding, and of driving drunk. The notion that we shouldn’t pass any legal limitations on firearms because people will continue to violate the law is stupid.

You can count among the fuckwits and cowards Democrats who are too gutless to demand an absolute ban on semiautomatic weapons but instead pander useless “assault weapon ban” which makes illegal firearms that look like military weapons but leaves out guns that are equally deadly but don’t look scary. You can count among the fuckwits and cowards the same Democrats who demand closing “gunshow loopholes” instead of demanding nationwide mandatory registration of all guns and gun owners. You can count among the fuckwits and cowards the same Democrats who would make it illegal to possess high capacity magazines instead of requiring a permit to purchase ammunition. If you want to stand up to the NRA and make a real difference, you need to have the guts to present the only solutions that will work instead of trying to pass half assed “feel good” laws that will do zero to prevent future mass murders.

I generally agree, but I’m also a pragmatic liberal. I know firearm registration isn’t going to happen — at least not in the foreseeable future. But it IS possible to close the gun show loophole. Incrementalism is frustrating, but if that’s what it takes, then I’ll take it.

The 2nd amendment gives the right to bear arms but it says nothing about ammunition. If the Democrats wanted to have a real effect gun violence, they could propose registering all ammunition purchases and setting up a 1000% Federal Sales Tax on all ammunition and making some calibers and types of bullet (e.g. armor piercing) illegal. Let’s see the NRA parading around with empty barrels!

Good on you for writing about it. Will it help? No, of course not. No one person writing about any issue is going to help bring about change. But millions of people expressing publicly their opinions — that matters, and yeah, that helps. We all need to speak up.

I hope you’ll also consider calling your members of Congress. Will that make a difference? No. But dozens or hundreds of people calling their Congressman or Senator can sometimes make a difference. It can be a tad intimidating the first few times you make that call, but it gets a wee bit easier each time. Sort of like writing a blog post.

Preach it! Nobody is trying to take guns away from everyone, just merely from those who shouldn’t have one. Guns that nobody should have. They ignore these issues to line their pockets from the NRA. Fuck the NRA. People are dying but since when does the government actually care about the citizens? Which is a shame because they are suppose to work for us, not for people like the NRA